Shoebox Warehouse Part 2

For the past few years, our youth ministry has gone to volunteer in the Operation Christmas Child shoebox warehouse. Unfortunately, we haven't had the opportunity to be a part of it until this year. There was a group of adults that went on Wednesday night and I was able to be a part of it. Craig and the kids had to be at church, but I was able to join them. Since we had just been there on Monday, I was excited about being a part of the next step in the shoebox journey.

Our Team

We went though orientation as soon as we arrived. You are broken up into work teams and each person is assigned a job. The pre-sorters open the boxes and pull out any money. The inspectors look throughout the boxes and pull out any contraband items (liquids, foods, chocolate, war items, glass). The taper tapes the box back up, being sure not to tape over the label that marked the age and sex of child the box was meant for. Then the boxers put the taped box into the designated large box to be shipped in. I was an inspector.

Our workstation

The boxers

It was a great time!! It was so interesting to see what other people had packed in their boxes. Hopefully I can remember some of the good ideas when it comes shoebox time next year. It was also an interesting trick trying to repack the boxes. I felt bad for the inspector who had to repack our personal boxes.

John had the scan gun. He would scan any box that had a barcode on it. The barcode is a way of tracking where your box went. We tracked our box and found out it ended up in India.

While we were there, we were given updates by the warehouse Chaplin about where we were in the entire process. He would also lead the whole warehouse is praying over the boxes and the workers. The goal for the warehouse was to process 80,000 boxes. While we were there, we hit 75,000.

It was a great feeling to be a part of it. If anyone ever has the opportunity to volunteer, I would highly encourage it!!! What a way to be a part of such an amazing gift.